Joint maple without a jointer/planer

bkharman

Member
Joined
Jul 1, 2013
Messages
2,072
Long story short, I have been a holdout for a J/P but needed to make this maple bench top for my mud room project (coming soon to the project forum here) so I did the old school way. I used my track saw.  Fist I needed to take some strips and drill out screw spots to attach to the bottom of the boards.

3236f88279c81f4d4d639628373d6c87.jpg


Then it was time to lay the bench top (1x6 hard maple) upside down in order, and attach these to held this all together. Very similar to how a table top would go.

0001bae499d36df039c213ee9181e119.jpg


Next flipped it over and got my 75” track out and was very close to getting another one to attach and cut the 81” cut but I had an idea of something I have done before... use my parallel guides instead!  I have ones from Precision Dogs, but any would have worked here.

dad0dab7965cbef8fa32dad4c96e0efe.jpg


Because I have 4 planks to join, I had three cuts to make. I did one side to about 60” and then slid it down and continued the cut to the end. Since this is .75” maple, I did about 4 passes to not bog down the 55. I flipped the rail onto the opposite side and it was already perfectly aligned. Made that cut and then adjusted to the middle cut. Came out great!

b27a598bd94ac334945650e790abd5be.jpg


I flipped it over took the screws out and took the planks back into my shop to domino and glue up. I threw a 6mm bit into my domino and made a bunch of cuts, not for strength, but mainly alignment (6x40s).

5149025f0bc73afe8311c05d34c1906e.jpg


A couple of quick adjustments and my Seneca plate attached and I plunged away. I had the dominos more towards the bottom as I am going to do some inlay here later, so didn’t want to cut into them. Glue and clamps and she looks great!  No gaps, flat as can be and ready for the next steps tomorrow.

d04f477ca3f1f4be6279a9779b2d9ed6.jpg


I will do a full write up on the mud room project when I am done, but since a lot of people here don’t have jointers and often will buy borg wood, I thought this would be a good one to document.

Cheers. Bryan.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Beautiful.  You gotta make do with what you have and this looks great.  I had read here recently that when using the track saw like this, to get your boards laid out exactly as they will be and then make the two joining cuts.  If your saw was out of alignment, even a little, the complementary nature of the cuts would still make it work out.  But I guess you probably knew that.. [cool]
 
I tried this technique last week and it didn't work for me. I think because I didn't go the extra step of screwing the boards down like you did. There wasn't enough extra to clamp them individually either. I used the CMS to joint them instead. .can't even see the seam.
 
For successful edge jointing with a saw the boards have to be flat and the same thickness. This is clever way to get them flat.
 
I simply trim the boards with track saw one edge at a time. Then glue without any alignment aid. I wiggle them flush as I tighten the clamps. Works great every time. The down side of having no alignment tenons is difficulty of glueing many boards at a time.
 
Very cool and very efficient.  I suppose the other benefit of this approach is that, kind of like match planing, your saw could be slightly off of 90 and it won't matter - the two angles should end up complementary.  As opposed to what I have done  - just ripping each edge - where if it's off by a little, it's a problem.

 
It is key that the boards are prevented from moving for the split kerf method to work.

Seth
 
I did something similar when I made my coffee table a few years ago.  Rather than screw the boards together, I used a bead of hot glue to hold the boards to the alignment strips.  When I got the cuts made, the hot glue was easy to peel off and there were no screw holes to fill.  [smile]
 
Sparktrician said:
Rather than screw the boards together, I used a bead of hot glue to hold the boards to the alignment strips.  When I got the cuts made, the hot glue was easy to peel off and there were no screw holes to fill.  [smile]

Me likeeee...that's even easier.  [big grin]
 
Sparktrician said:
I did something similar when I made my coffee table a few years ago.  Rather than screw the boards together, I used a bead of hot glue to hold the boards to the alignment strips.  When I got the cuts made, the hot glue was easy to peel off and there were no screw holes to fill.  [smile]
I have done the hot glü thing as well, but for this one, since this will be the bottom of the bench top, I didn’t care about the holes.

Cheers. Bryan.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Glued up. Planed up. Sanded to 150 and ready for the next steps! 

82629f48bdd96a673a50f15cd0430c01.jpg


Cheers. Bryan.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
Back
Top